By Dan Neil

You're a connoisseur, a Porsche-ophile, an enthusiast collector, with multiple examples of Stuttgart's finest in your garage or on your résumé. As a superfan you can recite the driver teams from each overall win (19) at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. You named your first child Ferdinand. She is not happy about it.

Our test car -- the 2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T, for "Touring" -- has been curated especially for you and a few thousand like-minded and well-moneyed obsessives, globally/annually. Behold, one of only two 911 models to retain a traditional, manually shifted six-speed transmission, relying on a pedal-actuated clutch. Borrowed from the track-hardened 911 GT3, the six-speed uses the same bushings and robust linkages, allowing more mechanical and vibratory feedback to reach the driver's right palm. The T's stick shifter is topped by a finial of open-pore walnut about the size of a jai alai pelota. Nice haptics, that.

Compared to the slick, stictionless shifting action of the retired seven-speed manual, the GT3-derived unit feels chunky, chonky, even a bit clunky, with a distinct metal-on-metal, hammer-and-anvil moment when the shifter finds its mark.

With 7th gear eliminated, the shift-gate pattern is less crowded, which reduces the chances of a missed or muffed shift as drivers are practicing their heroics. In Porsche-speak the six-speed offers more "precision." The clutch pedal throw is short, well weighted, with progressive feedback as the clutch loads up. The pedals are ideally spaced for heel-and-toe downshifting and include a proper dead pedal to help drivers brace themselves.

The T might as well stand for tactile. The six-speed is sandwiched between a torque-rich, twin-turbo flat six (331 lb-ft from 2,000-5,000 rpm) and a mechanical limited-slip rear differential. The 3.0-liter boxer engine exhales through a less restrictive, more resonant and sonorous sports exhaust system. In Sport and Sport Plus drive modes, as the engine revs fall off the exhaust spits and crackles like spalling across a foundry floor.

The T condensate adds lightweight glass while subtracting nonessentials, such as soundproofing. Also considered extraneous: the rear seats. The T has only a carpeted parcel area in the back.

The T dials in the immediacy: The steering ratio is quicker than the standard car. Rear-wheel steering helps tighten the T's turning circle to a nimble 35.8 feet. The front and rear stabilizer bars have been revised to match the edgier cornering response; the ride height has been lowered 10 mm to reduce roll force and improve road holding.

Driven in anger, the T can take impetuous bites out of corners at initial turn-in -- answering with a sharp, sweet uptake of cornering load and weight in the wheel and then unwinding lightly and effortlessly with corner-exiting power. Perfectly balanced, sweet and true under hard braking, light-footed, quick-tempered...In my considered opinion the T kicks ass.

The T is also fitted with six-piston front brakes (now standard on all Carrera models), staggered wünder tires (20/21-inch, f/r) and brake-based torque-vectoring on the differential. But essentially the T is only a delivery system for the three-pedal transmission.

It might surprise Earthlings to learn the racier gearbox doesn't make the T faster or stronger. Quite the contrary. Compared to the blink-quick actuation of conventional automatics or dual-clutch gearboxes, the human-in-the-loop solution takes forever to change ratios. Please note that the entry-level Carrera 911, powered by the same 388-hp flat-six engine, is almost a half-second quicker to 60 mph (3.9 seconds), owing to its eight-speed Doppelkupplung transmission.

According to Porsche, the T requires 4.3 seconds to reach 60 mph and that's in the hands of a well-practiced factory driver. Owners who cannot cleanly execute the full-power upshift from 1st to 2nd gear (around 48 mph) will go slower and pay more for the privilege. Our test car's base price comes in $13,900 higher than the standard 911.

Now that's provocative. For as long as there have been fast and faster cars, automakers have charged according to raw performance, linearly and proportionally. Here Porsche is charging a premium for a 911 that is not only slower than its siblings but downright languorous compared to rear-drive rivals such as Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (2.3 seconds), BMW M4 Competition Coupe (3.8) or Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing (3.6).

Discerning enthusiasts might argue that 0-60 mph acceleration is a crude, outdated and often misleading metric that fails to capture the qualia, the essential and ineffable, moment-to-moment feels that comprise the automotive experience. Electric cars with all-wheel drive will forever have the mechanical advantage in holeshot acceleration. What matters is the mysterious valence between human and machine, the dance with Shiva that the aficionados call engagement.

Yes, I know. It was the naifs, knaves and bench-racing knuckleheads of the luxury-performance demographic that overprivileged 0-60 mph acceleration, and still do.

There is an element of clubbiness about the T, insofar as owners must be proficient with a stick shift. It's a vanishing skill set; only about one in five U.S. drivers know how. The T can be identified in the wild by its window decals with the shift pattern logo, signaling to those in the know. But the unit in the T is hardly your father's cog swapper. Among many refinements, it has automatic rev-matching on downshifting. This function eliminates the need for heel-and-toe braking -- that is, braking with the right foot while also blipping the throttle, which is the trickiest bit to master.

The analog purity of the T is also compromised by the digitally massaged rear-wheel steering and the brake-based torque vectoring across the rear axle. Combined these systems constitute a kind of sports-car autotune, tweaking the freqs whenever the driver's inputs are less than pitch perfect.

My biggest note on the T comes down to this: A car designed around the row-your-own thrills of a manual gearbox offers relatively few chances to engage with it. One reason is that the gear ratios were borrowed unchanged from the seven-speed, except the 7th gear was omitted. This makes the T's gear spread a bit tall. The car attains 55 mpg in the middle of 2nd gear. Rarely will you find enough open road to powershift twice at the engine's raunchy, wailing 7,500 rpm redline.

Porsche lovers often wind up collecting tickets too.

2025 Porsche 911 Carrera T

Base price: $134,000

Price, as tested: $155,655

Powertrain: twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter DOHC flat-six with variable valve and lift timing; six-speed manual transmission; rear-wheel drive with torque vectoring.

Power/torque: 388 hp at 6,500 rpm/331 lb-ft at 2,000-5,000 rpm

Length/wheelbase/width/height: 178.8/96.5/80.0/50.9 inches

Curb weight: 3,316 pounds

0-60 mph: 4.3 seconds

1/4 -mile time: 12.7 seconds

EPA fuel economy: not tested yet

Luggage capacity: 4.8 cubic feet

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 02, 2025 14:45 ET (19:45 GMT)

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